Independent Income at later TL stages

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

There are massive problems at TL 6+ when your players have a day job and want to save money from it for KEWL STUFF.

To be fair, that could be described as failing to not care much about ingame finance.

Which seems like a condition that translates to 'the rules are okay so long as you don't actually use them for anything'...

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by maximara

For an extreme example compare New York City, NT to Mesilla, NM and you see just how out of wack that idea is. Even a more modest comparison of Columbus, OH to Chillicothe, OH shows the flaw with this model.

For that part, note that City Stats says that San Francisco's wealth level is Comfortable, which makes it expensive to live in. These days it might need to be Wealthy. You shouldn't assume that every community's typical residents have Average wealth.

[Donny Brook]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

If one region has a lower standard of living than another, the people in the region with the lower standard of living have lower Status, and hence a lower Cost of Living.

I don't think that holds up. The Governor of Arkansas doesn't have a lower status than the Governor of Connecticut, but the costs of living in those states vary considerably.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

There are massive problems at TL 6+ when your players have a day job and want to save money from it for KEWL STUFF.

There are also problem when your character doesn’t have a job and you expect his or her Wealth to do the fulfil the ordinary and usual function of wealth – to produce a income or rents, dividends, interest, and royalties. The only way to get an income out of assets is to pay extra character points for Independent Income, even when they don’t meet the definition. It the character owns a house then you have to impute its accommodation services as income hypothecated to Cost-of-Living, but there is no indication that you can do that or how much of Cost=of=Living it covers. If the character has a mortgage the rules for Debt seem to imply that that ought to be worth Character points, even though it is relieving them of rental payments. A character in a very ordinary situation requires a complicated build with Debt and Independent Income, and when you try that build you find that Debt and Independent Income produce figures that are way too big. Debt gives rules for how many character points it costs to pay off your mortgage, but not how much money.

Independent Income produce an income that is very large compared with the cash figure for Wealth, implying that the amount invested must be several to many time starting cash. You’re doing very well to get 9% real return on a secure investment that holds its value against inflation: that makes ten CP of II worth thirteen times starting wealth. And though in many societies invested wealth is respected or even prestigious, that wealth is not included when Wealth affects Status.

GURPS is indeed not, and ought not to be, GURPS Personal Finance. But that means that it ought not to have embedded in it a set of rules for personal finances. It is no excuse for those rules being incomplete, inconsistent, and not working as written for ordinary characters’ circumstances without requiring sophisticated interpretations and transformative waivers from the GM.

If you are going to start from the position that Wealth represents general financial circumstances with no distinct between capital and current, between wages and rent, that may indeed be very appropriate for a game that is about adventures, not personal finances. But it is a fatally compromised foundation on which to build an elaborate structure of cost of living, job income, “independent income”, ordinary interest and rental income, imputed income from assets in household use, debt, settled lifestyle, specific monthly incomes and required expenditures. Such a structure built on such a foundation is doomed. Bulldoze the site.

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

I don't think that holds up. The Governor of Arkansas doesn't have a lower status than the Governor of Connecticut, but the costs of living in those states vary considerably.

You're confusing real-world social stations with GURPS Status, which does not scale to local conditions. Status 0 is that social position which GURPS characters default to if they don't spend or receive any points on it, with an associated Cost of Living of $600 per month. If you have more or less than someone else in the same setting, you are NOT of the same Status, regardless of your society's titles or egalitarianism.

I don't know what the lifestyles of those two governors are really like, but if one is a full Cost of Living above the other in GURPS terms, and both are paying the Cost of Living of their Statuses, then they are NOT of the same Status.

[Polydamas]

What was the thread where we discussed what fraction of incomes should be required to support one adult at the standard of living typical for that income? I remember that the consensus was around 50-70% to allow for children, dependant elders, and spouses without a cash income.

Originally Posted by whswhs

For that part, note that City Stats says that San Francisco's wealth level is Comfortable, which makes it expensive to live in. These days it might need to be Wealthy. You shouldn't assume that every community's typical residents have Average wealth.

I wonder how much we could fix by just separating status-as-standard-of-living from status-as-social-position. That would make it easier to represent cases such as the merchant who has vast wealth but less social standing than scholars or warriors.

Assets (including things like pensions and usufruct to land) tend to change dramatically over the course of a life cycle. It seems like the Starting Wealth rules should assume someone in their early 20s who has started to make their own living and that characters who have saved or inherited more resources should have an Advantage to represent that.

SF is a slightly odd case because the techies who don't actually want to live in the Bay Area just to have a well-paid job have been fleeing during the pandemic. The pandemic also cut into the business of renting homes out on AirBnB. I hear that rents have fallen dramatically.

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

GURPS is indeed not, and ought not to be, GURPS Personal Finance. But that means that it ought not to have embedded in it a set of rules for personal finances.

Well then, thank goodness that it doesn't! All it has are traits to represent kinda how rich or poor you are, how much to pay to maintain a lifestyle, and a couple of ways to increase or decrease your monthly cash supply. Y'know, things you might need to know during an adventure once in a while.

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

There are also problem when your character doesn’t have a job and you expect his or her Wealth to do the fulfil the ordinary and usual function of wealth – to produce a income or rents, dividends, interest, and royalties. The only way to get an income out of assets is to pay extra character points for Independent Income, even when they don’t meet the definition. It the character owns a house then you have to impute its accommodation services as income hypothecated to Cost-of-Living, but there is no indication that you can do that or how much of Cost=of=Living it covers. If the character has a mortgage the rules for Debt seem to imply that that ought to be worth Character points, even though it is relieving them of rental payments. A character in a very ordinary situation requires a complicated build with Debt and Independent Income, and when you try that build you find that Debt and Independent Income produce figures that are way too big. Debt gives rules for how many character points it costs to pay off your mortgage, but not how much money.

Independent Income produce an income that is very large compared with the cash figure for Wealth, implying that the amount invested must be several to many time starting cash. You’re doing very well to get 9% real return on a secure investment that holds its value against inflation: that makes ten CP of II worth thirteen times starting wealth. And though in many societies invested wealth is respected or even prestigious, that wealth is not included when Wealth affects Status.

GURPS is indeed not, and ought not to be, GURPS Personal Finance. But that means that it ought not to have embedded in it a set of rules for personal finances. It is no excuse for those rules being incomplete, inconsistent, and not working as written for ordinary characters’ circumstances without requiring sophisticated interpretations and transformative waivers from the GM.

I agree that Independent Income is best used for things like a pension, remittance, or annuity which cannot be converted into a lump sum. Property like a house or a slave is different, because it generates virtual revenue but can be sold or transferred for a lump sum or an annuity (medieval peasants often signed over their land to someone younger in exchange for a contract guaranteeing them a house, food, fuel, and clothing of a certain standard every year as long as they lived).

The rule of thumb in the old country used to be that a retiree should withdraw no more than 3-4% of their savings per year to be reasonably confident of maintaining that rate of withdrawal throughout their retirement.

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

You're confusing real-world social stations with GURPS Status, which does not scale to local conditions. Status 0 is that social position which GURPS characters default to if they don't spend or receive any points on it, with an associated Cost of Living of $600 per month. If you have more or less than someone else in the same setting, you are NOT of the same Status, regardless of your society's titles or egalitarianism.

I don't know what the lifestyles of those two governors are really like, but if one is a full Cost of Living above the other in GURPS terms, and both are paying the Cost of Living of their Statuses, then they are NOT of the same Status.

This gets into Status as social standing, and Status as standard of living. A merchant of Genoa or Prato could have the same income as the King of England (and did not have to scatter it around so many castles and estates), but they were not of the same social standing. GURPS 4e combines the two into one trait in a way which is not helpful.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

Well then, thank goodness that it doesn't! All it has are traits to represent kinda how rich or poor you are, how much to pay to maintain a lifestyle, and a couple of ways to increase or decrease your monthly cash supply. Y'know, things you might need to know during an adventure once in a while.

The GURPSwiki has this comment about wealth:

One major problem with Wealth in GURPS is it is insanely setting dependent and not in the way you think.

For example in Lost in Space's "Treasure of the Lost Planet" the treasure of a pirate from Betelguese is pig iron - because gold, silver, and even jewels on his homeworld are so common that buildings and even utensils are made with them but there was no iron on Betelguese. Minecraft's emeralds similarly serves as how much the value of something changes.

In Star Trek's "Catspaw" Kirk points out the Enterprise can make a ton of diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and sapphires making them "valueless".

One of the gag emotes by the female Draenei in World of Warcraft is "This planet has a tremendous supply of sandstone. The inhabitants must be wealthy beyond their dreams."

In the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon Eric is from a wealthy family but in the Realm he is effectively dead broke as the money he has on him is worthless. The Howells of Gilligan's Island are in the same situation for their stay on the island as the money they brought with them is effectively worthless.

Even within the US the cost of living fluctuates wildly. There are places where $20,000 is average wealth and others (such as New York City) where it would be considered struggling or even poor.

Moreover, there are materials rarer then gold and silver on our Earth and yet are worth less. Rhenium comes to mind.